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Happy Friday!  I hope you’ve found some ways to put some frugal into your week.  There are so many different ways to save little bits of money all week long.  And we all know that those little bits can really add up!

This week we’ve been making some choices and moves towards our BHAG of paying off debt.  If you missed the April check in, you can check out that post and see how our payoff plan is going.

The 5 Ways We’ve Saved Money This Week

5 Ways We've Saved Money This Week: This blogger has a whole series. Every Friday she posts 5 new ways that her family saved money that week.

Old Dryer

We have a special water situation in our home.  We have no access to public water or to a cistern or rain collection system.  We are dependent on a man to haul water to our home in his truck on a fairly regular basis.

Water is not cheap.  It’s a valued resource for us.

When we first moved in, getting a HE washer was a priority.  With a medium sized family, we do a lot of laundry!  Running a washer at 40 gallons of water per load wasn’t going to fly.  So we bought an expensive front loader at 15 gallons per load instead.  We recouped that money pretty quickly based on water savings.

But I couldn’t justify buying a new dryer at the same time.  So while our washer could do large loads at a time, the dryer couldn’t handle that much laundry.

For 7 years I have been running 2 washer loads to 3 or 4 dryer loads.  It’s been a lot of juggling.  But juggling saved me several hundreds of dollars that I would have spent on that matching brand new dryer.

New Dryer

I noticed back in the fall that the dryer seemed to be on its way out.  It just wasn’t drying as well, and it was just a matter of time before it died.  It was bought secondhand and was pretty old.

Last Friday it gave up and completely died.  I knew I’d be looking for another dryer as soon as possible.  The weather hasn’t been cooperative for hanging clothes, and we can’t go long without laundry.

The very next day, I learned that a friend was selling a dryer for a great deal.  Not only that, but it was a larger dryer that actually matches my washer!  The timing was like a God wink.  Meant to be!

Now doing laundry feels like a vacation.  No calculating how much laundry to move from washer to dryer.  No loads sitting wet and waiting their turn.

Plus I feel certain that we will save a good bit of money on our electric bill with a more efficient dryer.

Less Snacking

Do you ever think about the American love affair with snacks?  Kids seem to think that they are starving if they go an hour without eating.  In our home, I allow an after school snack and a bedtime snack.  Most of the time it’s fruit or some of their leftover Easter candy.  Otherwise, they can wait for the next meal.

Hubby and I are trying to reign in our own snacking habits as well.  We don’t eat freely all day either, but I certainly catch myself eating mindlessly.  It’s so easy to do when you’re home or working at a desk!  Cutting back on snacking saves money and the waistline.

[Tweet “The latest 5 Ways We’ve Saved Money This Week post is up! #frugal”]

Dig to the Back of the Fridge

I mentioned that I’m no longer a fan of the pantry challenge, but I do think that it’s important to rotate your foods regularly so it doesn’t go bad before you can use it.  One thing we often use is sour cream.  I always have several tubs of it on hand.

I try to keep it stacked so that the easiest one to get to is the one that will expire next.  (Kids often open a new one, and they won’t think to look at dates.)

But sometimes one will escape somehow and I will find it on the day of the expiration date.  When I’m not sure about how long an item is actually good to eat, I often check the Still Tasty website.  It’s such a great resource!  Bookmark it before your next fridge clean out.

Reprioritized

When we sat down to put together our yearly goals, one of our home goals was to put in a driveway at our barn.  This is needed because it’s a tough place to get a truckload of hay put in (for instance).  With our growing goat herd, this is becoming important.

That said, the lack of driveway is inconvenient, but not dire.  Our main goal, our BHAG for this year, is getting debt paid off.  This debt has been a noose around our necks for far too long!  We are concerned that if we don’t pull out all of the stops to get it paid off, it will hold us back for a long time.

So the barn driveway is the latest victim in this #yearofno.  And we are really happy with our decision to put that money towards the debt instead.  Some day we’ll have a beautiful driveway that we pay cash on.

That’s the latest 5 Ways We’ve Saved This Week!

If you’d like to read money saving tips from other weeks, find the whole series right here.

Keep up with the latest blog happenings, plus get money saving tips in your inbox that I don’t put on the blog!  Sign up now for the weekly newsletter.

I’d love to hear how you saved this week!  Leave us a comment or a link to your blog post.